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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

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Terese Svoboda is a poet, fiction writer, and memoirist. Her poetry collections include When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley: Selected and New Poems (Anhinga Press, 2015), All Aberration (University of Georgia Press, 2009), and Mere Mortals (University of Georgia Press, 2009). She is the recipient of the Cecil Hemley Award, the Emily Dickinson Prize, and the Iowa Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She lives in New York City.

Jamaican Idol

Walking backward from the sea,
scales shedding, you seek the cave.
This is why the French door admits
only ocean. You stare into the louver
and forget how to get out. Lull
is the word, or loll. The sea returns,
completing your pulse, the waves live,
each breath of yours worship.

Terese Svoboda

Terese Svoboda is a poet, fiction writer, and memoirist. Her poetry collections include When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley: Selected and New Poems (Anhinga Press, 2015), All Aberration (University of Georgia Press, 2009), and Mere Mortals (University of Georgia Press, 2009).

by this poet

A De Chirico head aslant on a coverlet,
body mostly flown, the dazed prayers dumb.
The ritual cigarette, the ritual drink:
incense, holy water. No ambivalence,
the woman inside fled, the whispers
I make of tenderness—hers—she sleeps through.
She's in that corridor, tunnel, the light is left on—
shut if

Dogs slink around her bed in hunger.
Lest you make sacred her image
on a brick, on your drive or thumb,
she needs to be turned twice a day
plant-ish, in her deshabille.
Lethargy has its roots in lethal.
This is the truth you must share
or die, the waves over your head,
the waving you're not doing.
Pride

Who loots the dew or enjoins
a shadow to guard a tree?
The bird in the pie can't pretend
to arms, its claws rock
the coin in the crust.
The train's single eye
examines the tree that the pie
holds the fruit of,
its engine rasps past the bird
as if smoke lent its shadow.
And the dew? Surely
it's a dark gulp

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On my desk is a photograph of you
taken by the woman who loved you then.
In some photos her shadow falls
in the foreground. In this one,
her body is not that far from yours.
Did you hold your head that way
because she loved it?
She is not invisible, not
my enemy,
nor even the past.
I

Soldiers with guns are at our door again.
Sister, quick. Change into a penny.
I'll fold you in a handkerchief,
put you in my pocket
and jump inside a sack,
one of the uncooked rice.
Brother, hurry. Turn yourself
into one of our mother's dolls
on the living room shelf. I'll be the dust